Solaris at Digital Domain | Bob White and David Cunningham | SIGGRAPH HIVE 2022
94Digital Domain's David Cunningham and Bob White take you through the implementation of Solaris at Digital Domain, how it is being used on some of their newer shows, and where they plan to take things in the future.
Bob White has worked in the VFX and animation industry in Vancouver for almost 20 years, and has been overseeing projects as CG Supervisor for the last 10 years. As CG Supervisor, Bob's priority is to create the highest quality visual effects possible on the sequences he oversees with his team, and to make the process as streamlined as possible. After CG Supervising the construction site sequence in Digital Domain's Oscar-nominated work on “Free Guy,” Bob moved into a role as lighting department supervisor. Bob has been instrumental in driving Digital Domain’s lighting pipeline into a much more modern approach utilizing Houdini/Solaris and USD.
David Cunningham is a DFX Supervisor at Digital Domain, with 12 years of experience in the film and visual effects industry, known for being a driving force in both quality and efficiency. The results of his passion for delivering the highest standard of work and optimized workflows are exemplified by his key contributions as CG Supervisor for Digital Domain's Oscar-nominated work on both “Free Guy” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” For the latest Spider-Man film, David implemented a dynamic shift in Digital Domain's lighting pipeline to incorporate a USD and Solaris based workflow, which was used to allow the environments and lighting departments to efficiently render billions of polygons in their 2.5 square-mile CG recreation of a portion of New York.